New York CNN Business –
Sen. Amy Klobuchar slammed Ticketmaster in an open letter to its CEO, saying she has “serious concerns” about the company’s operations after a service crisis on Tuesday that left Taylor Swift fans furious.
In the letter to CEO Michael Rapino, D-Minnesota and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition, Antitrust and Consumer Policy, wrote that complaints from Swift’s fans can’t buy tickets to her upcoming tour , in addition to criticism of the high rates, suggests that the company “continues to abuse its market positions.”
“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that usually drive companies to innovate and improve their services. This can lead to the kinds of dramatic service failures we’ve seen this week, where consumers are the ones paying the price,” Klobuchar wrote.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the nation’s largest concert promoter, merged about a decade ago. Klobuchar noted that the company at the time was committed to “developing a unique and easily accessible platform” for ticket delivery. On Thursday, the senator told Rapino that “it seems your confidence was misplaced.”
“When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, it was subject to an antitrust consent decree that prohibited it from abusing its market position,” Klobuchar wrote. “However, there have been numerous complaints about your company’s compliance with this decree.”
The letter includes a list of questions for Rapino to answer next week. Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.
On Tuesday, the company said “there has been historically unprecedented demand with millions of people showing up” to buy tickets to Swift’s tour and thanked fans for their “patience.”
Klobuchar is the latest high-profile politician to openly criticize Ticketmaster over the ticketing disaster that left bad blood between Swift fans and the company.
“@Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s @taylorswift13 tickets, and are a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an uncontrolled monopoly,” tweeted Rep. David Cicilline, currently chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, on Tuesday.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, their merger with LiveNation should never have been approved and they must be stopped,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Complaints about the company’s monopoly power date back to well before Tuesday’s ticket woes, when the platform appeared to crash or freeze during pre-sale purchases for Swift’s latest tour.
In 1994, when Taylor Swift was just four years old and ticket lines were in person or by phone, not online, the rock group Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s antitrust division alleging that Ticketmaster has a “virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of concert tickets.” He tried to book his tour only in places that did not use Ticketmaster.
The Justice Department and many state attorneys general have made similar complaints over the years.
Despite these concerns, Ticketmaster continued to grow more dominant. Pearl Jam’s complaint was quietly dismissed. The Justice Department and the states allowed the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger despite a 2010 court filing in the case raising objections to the merger. In the filing, the Justice Department said Ticketmaster’s share of major concert halls exceeded 80%.
– CNN Business’ Chris Isidore contributed to this report.